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Letter to my creative writing tutor Tim Atkins (2016)

My voice is a
product of my history. As a promising young writer things were by far from
promising. Homework to my schoolboy self was the most exquisite agony. Made to
sit at the dining table so the parents could watch me. Pen pressed hard on the
page. That tightness of the throat when you want to cry. The mistakes, the back
to front letters, the back to front words, the back to front sentences. Scared
to fail before the end of each line, my pen mysteriously not doing what I told
it. Another spelling mistake and I would be made to start again. Agony. Agony.
Agony.

The worst thing
is… the agony never left me.

Here I am again,
putting myself though agony. I am either tenacious for my dream, or an idiot.
It all started with Biggles. Well, I like to think it did. It didn’t, but for
the sake of a romantic start, I shall say it did. (It actually started with a
series of pirate books that featured a griffin). I needed something to capture
my dyslexic eye, to focus it. I am still the same in that I need to trust the
author, to build my confidence in them. I have read all the 98 Biggles books.
Oh how I wanted to know what adventure Biggles was going on next with his chums
Algy, Ginger and Bertie. Not to mention when he stumbled into his nemesis von
Stalhein.

Biggles would
fly around the world in flying boats. I devoured those words, but slowly, at my
dyslexic speed. I extracted the full flavour of each hard won word. Each hard
won page another beautiful experience. Each hard won book an epic journey, an
epic struggle.

It was hard to
read and it still is. Then I would press my finger to each word with a piece of
card to underline each line. This way my eyes could not wander. Words pulled
ponderously, one at a time, from the page.

Long before
Biggles I wanted to write. I wrote great stories. They were full of exciting
things and interlaced with pictures of amazing spaceships and aliens. Wow! So
deep was my imagination! Those stories were fantastical. Epic stories. Magical
and deep. There was one problem: they were bullshit. My teacher, my parents,
and later myself, looked at those exercise books filled with my great stories
and could only see mush. Pictures of scribbles in brio. Words of no meaning.
Non-words. One big fat dyslexic spelling mistake.

(Later I came to
love the works of Edward Thomas and George Orwell. I connected with their love
of the planet, nature and human condition. I agreed with Orwell’s writing
style: journalistic and transparent and not using a long word when I short one
would do.)

How does this
affect my voice?

When the words
started to make sense to the world I had fought like a valiant knight to get
those words onto the page. They, like my reading, did not come easy. It was
like extracting teeth for each hard fought line. Now my writing voice is a
product of that. I don’t waste words, as words are so hard to produce. Even on
a computer (my savour!) those words need to be ripped from my brain into being,
in black and write.

I should have
gone into sports or something. I should have looked for the easy path. But no,
I wanted words so much. I still suffer, but the suffering is worth it, worth it
in the name of self-expression, worth it in extracting, and being in, that
special place that is the written w-o-r-l-d.

(In-between
school and uni I wrote 6 novels. 1,2,3,4 were utter tosh. 5 was sent to many
agents: “Good but no market for it, does not fit a genre,” they said. Number
six, an action thriller, very Biggles influenced and fits a genre, 100.000
words, 3 years work and more, re-written twice, edited many times. Sent to half
the agents in the Artists and Writers yearbook. Will become a Kindle book when
it is rejected by the rest of the agents in that book.)

Before I could
read I used to look at picture books. One in particular was a favourite: a book
of animals. Polar bears, otters, giraffe, zebra, elephants, I loved the natural
world, I thought those animals were here forever. Later I loved nature
programmes. Then something changed. At a certain point Mr. Attenborough started
to say these animals were in danger. And very soon I could no longer watch
nature programmes as the news was too hard. Those animals I thought were part
of the status quo were dying. The rainforests were being destroyed. And we were
doing it all.

This led to me
in 2011 going off to Ecuador, Indonesia and India to try and do my bit to help.
I soon realised I wasn’t a hardy type. Not suited to the harsh rainforest life.
No, I was better with words.

This was when I
realised that I needed to become a better writer. My chance as a promising
young writer is well over, but now I have a chance as a writer who has seen
more than most ever see. I feel I need to take all of that and try to do my bit
for the planet. I would like to produce commercial fiction and articles in
order to fund and promote my continued effectiveness in making the world aware
of the plight of the natural world. However it is to be done, my final life aim
is to have tried; tried to tell the world that we need to look after this
place.

This is no boast but I love my stereo. Having a good stereo is the
centre of my life and my only essential possession for someone who is
not really into possessions.

Early days

I started my stereo life with a radio my Grandad gave me. Then I got my
Dad's old setup (record deck and Sinclair System 2000 compact amp) which I added
another one of my Grandads radio's to.

My Dad's amp was like this only black:

The Pioneer compact hi-fi

When I got a proper job I was able to start saving for something better
and I bought a Pioneer compact Hi-fi which after a time I really started
to hate. The Pioneer quality was lacking from this unit and really a
lot of it was for show, like the twin display spectrum analyser. I hated
the way the cassette and cd decks clunked about. Many things frustrated
me with it, like th…

Now I have a 24" monitor on my laptop I find that the £5 keyboard is really not up to it. Hence the Dell KB522 Wired Business Multimedia Keyboard. Very nice. I have started my degree in Creative and Professional Wiring this year and think I have a lot of typing ahead, hence the keyboard. It was only once I got this I realised how hard I had to hit the keys on the old one, as first of all with this one it hurt I was hitting them so hard. Pretty much sorted on the computer front now. I bought Dell hoping for longevity from this item. I don't like to buy new stuff all the time from an environmental standpoint.